APPEL: The Democrats’ Debates Put Socialism, Not Freedom, On Display

The leaders of the National Democrat Party have now come out of the closet and have demonstrated their unqualified embrace of Marxism disguised as something they call democratic socialism. I chose my words carefully as I call them out on their thinly-veiled efforts to adopt policies not unlike those of the socialist model of the now-collapsed Soviet Union.

So what is socialism anyway? In a nutshell, it is a political and economic system in which government controls everything. It offers everything to everyone without cost as long as the recipients are willing to give up their freedoms. You see, freedom and socialism are incompatible.

Let me make this clear, the United States has been on a socialist slide for more than a hundred years. It has become a philosophy incrementally integrated into the American psyche by appeals to fairness and compassion. Many of our presidents have led this persistent attack on American individuality and freedom; Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Democrats like Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama all led the charge to shift away from individual liberty and self-reliance toward national collectivism. The result is we have seen the reallocation of political power away from the states (really the people) and the expansion of the massive government edifice in Washington DC (the bureaucrats).

The result of their socialist ideas, whether nobly intended or not, has been predictable. The decline of cities, the breakup of the traditional family structure, breakdown of the rule of law, overwhelming accrued pension and insurance obligations, massive government dependency, drug abuse, poverty, and on and on. As government expands, so our nation and those of our cities that adopt parallel social principles grow weaker by it.

Yet the drumbeat goes on, louder and louder, as the media builds the case for the legitimacy of left wing leaders undermining democracy in exchange for a socialist dream, the concept of One World (ever wonder why the anthem for the worldwide socialist movement is called the Internationale?). But the One World view is not new. Perhaps the most brilliant man in history, Albert Einstein, and his friends in the 1930’s were all about that socialist dream of One World. That is, they were until along came Hitler and Stalin, two socialist leaders who changed a lot of minds about the allure of socialism in the first half of the twentieth century. Socialism is an unstable system and can only exist when the government is all-powerful.

As I said freedom and socialism are incompatible.

So the next time you hear Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and all the other Democrats expounding on the allure of socialism and One World, think about this current event. The people of Hong Kong in their millions are today in the streets fighting against the takeaway of their freedoms by a socialist regime in China.